Music, Movies, & General Geekery: Life.by Christopher Grant Harris

Wednesday, 5 February 2020

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts is a rather good new cartoon on Netflix, about a tween girl trying to find her family of underground dwellers in a post-apocalyptic surface world full of giant, sentient animals.

This scene is from a flashback to before all the craziness began, showing Kipo and her father (voiced by Sterling K. Brown!!) enjoying some domestic tranquility and a charming, lovely family song. Partake and be pleasured:

Warren Dunes is sharing the stage with Chris King and the Gutterballs, as well as Tacoma band Modern Daze (of whom I confess I have not heard before). Julia also just announced that the extremely excellent local Tacoma rapper Chris Blount will be joining them for a song during their set!

Chris Blount and his blunt T-shirt.

The Fam and I and some fun kids are making the trek downtown to see this show.

Wednesday, 29 January 2020

Didn’t I just do a Black Tones song as my Wednesday Listening Pleasure at the beginning of this month? Oh, yeah, I did. Shut up: they’re good and I really enjoy their music. Plus they’ve released their first-ever official music video! It’s for “Ghetto Spaceship” and features a dramatized version of a time when the Walker Twins’ mother was pregnant with them. Since they’re in utero, they’re of course naked. The Walker Twins do seem to enjoy to be naked. Here’s Cedric on the cover of their album Cobain & Cornbread for example:

Who want some cheese?

Anyhoo, “Ghetto Spaceship” is from Cobain & Cornbread. Partake and be pleasured:

Wednesday, 22 January 2020

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the release of They Might Be Giants’s seminal album Flood. Their first major-label album, but still two albums away from creating a full backing band, Flood is still the band’s best-known and (arguably) most-lauded creation.

So popular was/is Flood that for many people it was a gateway drug of sorts; it served as the entryway to the rabbit hole of TMBG’s 22 studio albums plus uncounted singles/EPs, live albums, demo tapes, collections, samplers, and solo projects. Though some people never really explore TMBG beyond Flood (these people are derisively called “Flooders” by some), the songs from Flood still remain as iconic as any song in the band’s lexicon.

Here, therefore, is the official music video for Flood‘s lead single, “Birdhouse In Your Soul.” It is full of TMBG’s penchant for creepy imagery, bizarre-yet-highly-coordinated dance moves, and of course some William Allen White. Partake and be pleasured as if it were 1990 again:

Wednesday, 15 January 2020

Vanna Oh is a local Pacific Northwest musician whom I’m deeply ashamed to admit I had never heard of until this week. I heard of them thanks to Eva & Cedric Walker (of The Black Tones) and their new music video show called Video Bebop on The Seattle Channel! Thanks, Walker Twins!

So anyway, Vanna Oh simply shreds and I absolutely adore this song and the resultant video, which does great things with primary colors and also with film speed. Partake and be pleasured:

Wednesday, 8 January 2020

For this first Wednesday Listening Pleasure of 2020, I go back to late Summer of 2019 when local Seattleites The Black Tones appearead live on KEXP. Singer Eva Walker and her brother, drummer Cedric, have created one of the best local bands in existence right now.

Eva’s booming voice filters through Stevie Nicks by way of Joan Jett, with rounded, sliding notes that end in a delicious, warbling vibrato that has hints of Billie Holiday bubbling under the surface. “Mama! There’s a Spider In My Room!” is my favorite track from The Black Tones’s album, Cobain & Cornbread. Partake and be pleasured: